What are our thoughts when we inquire whether something depends on us?
Under what circumstances do we question this responsibility? We ask
ourselves whether we are anything, and whether really anything depends
on us when undergoing the buffets of fortune, of necessity, of violent
passions that dominate our souls, till we consider ourselves mastered,
enslaved, and carried away by them? Therefore we consider as dependent
on ourselves what we do without the constraint of circumstances,
necessity, or violence of passions--that is, voluntarily, and without
an obstacle to our will.[167] Hence the following definition: We are
responsible for that which depends on our will, which happens or which
is omitted according to our volition.[168] We indeed call voluntary
what we unconstrainedly do and consciously.[169] On us depends only
that of which we are the masters to do or not to do. These two notions
are usually connected, though they differ theoretically. There are
cases when one of them is lacking; one might, for instance, have the
power to commit a murder; and nevertheless if it were one's own father
that he had ignorantly killed, it would not be a voluntary act.[170] In
this case, the action was free, but not voluntary. The voluntariness of
an action depends on the knowledge, not only of the details, but also
of the total relations of the act.[171] Otherwise, why should killing a
friend, without knowing it, be called a voluntary action? Would not the
murder be equally involuntary if one did not know that he was to commit
it? On the contrary hypothesis, it may be answered that one had been
responsible for providing oneself with the necessary information[172];
but nevertheless it is not voluntarily that one is ignorant, or that
one was prevented from informing oneself about it.[173]